The ocean is humanity's largest battlefield. Resting in its depths lie the lost ships of war, spanning the totality of human history. Many wrecks are nameless, others from more recent times are remembered, honored even, as are the battles that claimed them, like Actium, Trafalgar, Tsushima, Jutland, Pearl Harbor, and Midway. Underwater exploration is increasingly discovering long-lost warships from the deepest parts of the ocean, revealing a vast undersea museum that speaks to battles won and lost, service, sacrifice, and the human costs of warfare. War at Sea is a dramatic global tour of this remote museum and other formerly lost traces of humanity's naval heritage. It is also an account by the world's leading naval archaeologist of how underwater exploration has discovered these remains, thus resolving mysteries, adding to our understanding of the past, and providing intimate details of the experience of naval warfare. Arranged chronologically, the book begins with the warships and battles of the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese, and then progresses through three thousand years to the lost ships of the Cold War. James Delgado, who has personally explored, dived, and studied a number of the wrecks and sites in the book, provides insights as an explorer, archaeologist, and storyteller. The result is a unique and compelling history of naval warfare. From fallen triremes and galleons to dreadnoughts, aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines, this book vividly brings thousands of years of naval warfare to life.

Rather than a natural frontier between natural enemies, this book approaches the English Channel as a shared space, which mediated the multiple relations between France and England in the long eighteenth century, in both a metaphorical and a material sense. Instead of arguing that Britain's insularity kept it spatially and intellectually segregated from the Continent, Renaud Morieux focuses on the Channel as a zone of contact. The 'narrow sea' was a shifting frontier between states and a space of exchange between populations. This richly textured history shows how the maritime border was imagined by cartographers and legal theorists, delimited by state administrators and transgressed by migrants. It approaches French and English fishermen, smugglers and merchants as transnational actors, whose everyday practices were entangled. The variation of scales of analysis enriches theoretical and empirical understandings of Anglo-French relations, and reassesses the question of Britain's deep historical connections with Europe.

An important part of eighteenth-century maritime conflict involved the destruction of enemy commerce and the protection of home trade. In performing these tasks, state navies were augmented by privateers, vessels owned, equipped and manned by private individuals authorised by their governments to attack and seize the enemy's seabourne property. For their reward, the investors and seafarers engaged in privateering ventures shared in the proceeds of any ships and goods taken and condemned as lawful prize. Privateering therefore represented a business opportunity to the maritime community, a chance to acquire instant wealth at the enemy's expense; at the same time, it appeared as a cheap convenient means by which the state might supplement its naval strength. In this important analysis David J. Starkey draws upon a wealth of documentary evidence to throw fresh light upon the character, scale and significance of the British privateering business.

Most people know of Arthur Ransome, the author of the classic children's sailing tale, Swallows & Amazons, and many other books in the same series. But besides his exciting tales of children on the water there is much more to the man. Before he wrote Swallows & Amazons, Ransome was a journalist for the Daily News, based in Russia. He is reputed to have played chess against Lenin and he married Trotsky's secretary. He cruised extensively in the Baltic in the 1920s on board his beloved Racundra. His account of his first cruise on that boat was his first commercially successful book, Racundra's First Cruise (also available from Fernhurst Books). The second cruise was spoilt by bad weather, but the third cruise was special - it was his honeymoon having married Evgenia Shelepina. Ransome clearly intended to publish the account of this cruise, but never finished it. Ransome enthusiast, Brian Hammett, got hold of the unpublished manuscript and found Ransome's hand-written notes, diaries, logbooks and photographs in the Ransome archive at Leeds University. Brian compiled this book, adding his own notes from his cruises in the same area. The result is a glorious volume which has delighted Ransome enthusiasts, sailors and landlubbers equally. This new paperback edition and eBook will be published on 8th May - the very day that Ransome and Shelepina got married in 1924 before their honeymoon cruise which is recounted in this book.

Life at sea in the nineteenth century was demanding and perilous. Seamen had to be able to rely on those around them. This was easier said than done. The sea could be, and still is, a place of constant and unpredictable danger, whether by storm, shipboard disease or threat from the crew. Stories of unimaginable cruelties inflicted upon crews by savage officers and treacheries committed by mutinous crews were the soap operas of the day. People followed the trials in the newspapers, hanging hungrily on to each new piece of detail. Tales of suffering, hardship and treachery were thrilling to those on land but also replete with piteous infamy.

Offering an introduction to the world's seas as a platform for global exchange and connection, Michael North offers an impressive world history of the seas over more than 3,000 years. Exploring the challenges and dangers of the oceans that humans have struggled with for centuries, he also shows the possibilities and opportunities they have provided from antiquity to the modern day. Written to demonstrate the global connectivity of the seas, but also to highlight regional maritime power during different eras, A World History of the Seas takes sailors, merchants and migrants as the protagonists of these histories and explores how their experiences and perceptions of the seas were consolidated through trade and cultural exchange. Bringing together the various maritime historiographies of the world and underlining their unity, this book shows how the ocean has been a vital and natural space of globalization. Carrying goods, creating alliances, linking continents and conveying culture, the history of the ocean played a central role in creating our modern globalized world.

At approximately 8:45 a.m. on 6 December 1917, the Belgian Relief vessel IMO struck the munitions-laden freighter Mont-Blanc in Halifax Harbour. The Mont-Blanc exploded in a devastating 2.9 kiloton blast, which killed 2,000 people and injured 9,000. More than 6,000 people were made homeless, and an additional 12,000 were left without shelter. Bearing Witness tells the story of the Explosion, and the catastrophic damage it caused, through the eyes and words of more than two dozen journalists and record keepers who experienced it first hand. Their accounts reveal a unique perspective, offering new detail about the tragedy and providing insight into the individuals who struggled to articulate the magnitude of the shocking event to the rest of the world. In addition to the original work by journalists and record keepers, Michael Dupuis provides over 30 photographs and illustrations, several previously unseen, and a detailed timeline of journalistic activities from the time of the Explosion on December 6 to December 16.

The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History presents the first such narrative of the earth's tenth largest body of water. In this beautifully written and illustrated volume, John S. Sledge explores the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human history and culture so rich. Many famous figures who sailed the Gulf's viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de Leon, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Jean Laffite, Tyrone Power, Richard Henry Dana, Libbie Custer, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest Hemingway, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Charles Dwight Sigsbee, at the helm of the doomed Maine. But Sledge also introduces a fascinating and diverse array of people connected to maritime life in the Gulf, including Mesoamerican pyramid builders, Spanish conquistadores, French pirates, Creole women, Cajun fishermen, African American stevedores, British jack-tars, and Greek sponge divers.Gulf events of global historical importance are detailed, such as the only defeat of armed and armored steamships by wooden sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the development of shipping containers by a former truck driver frustrated with antiquated loading practices, and the worst environmental disaster in American annals. Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built some of the world's most exotic cities--Havana, way station for conquistadores and treasure-filled galleons; New Orleans, the Big Easy, famous for its beautiful French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and relaxed morals; and oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico's oldest city, founded in 1519 by Hernan Cortes. Throughout history the residents of these cities and their neighbors along the littoral have struggled with challenges both natural and human-induced--devastating hurricanes, frightening epidemics, catastrophic oil spills, and conflicts ranging from dockside brawls to pirate raids, foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution. In the modern era the Gulf has become critical to energy Production, fisheries, tourism, and international trade, even as it is threatened by pollution and climate change. The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History is a work of verve and sweep that illuminates both the risks of life on the water and the riches that come from its bounty.

Amid the turmoil of the dying days of the Second World War, a series of ships were sunk in the Baltic. These terrible disasters add up to be the greatest loss of life ever recorded at sea, but the stories of these ships have been lost from view. While everyone recognises the name Titanic, the names Cap Arcona, Goya, General von Steuben and Thielbek draw little more than blank stares. Claes-Goeran Wetterholm brings the horror of these tragic events to life in this gripping study, first published in Swedish, as he collates the unknown stories of four major shipping disasters, the most terrible in history. Combining archive research with interviews with survivors and the relatives of those who died, Wetterholm vividly conveys his experiences of meeting many witnesses to a forgotten and horrifying piece of history.

How old is Earth? Can we look back in time? How long is a light year? How short is a femtosecond? What is Greenwich Mean Time? How did astronauts tell the time on the Moon? When did time begin? It's high time you knew the answers to these and many more intriguing questions, so why not pass the time reading this lighthearted, illustrated miscellany, packed with hundreds of amazing facts from the time experts at the Royal Observatory. In less than no time, you'll have discovered the myriad of influences that time has on our daily lives.

The publication of key voyaging manuscripts has contributed to the flourishing of enduring and prolific worldwide scholarship across numerous fields. These navigators and their texts were instrumental in spurring on further exploration, annexation and ultimately colonisation of the pacific territories in the space of only a few decades. This series will present new sources and primary texts in English, paving the way for postcolonial critical approaches in which the reporting, writing, rewriting and translating of Empire and the 'Other' takes precedence over the safeguarding of master narratives. Each of the volumes contains an introduction that sets out the context in which these voyages took place and extensive annotations clarify and explain the original texts. The first volume makes available Samuel Wallis' logs of the Dolphin's voyage 1766-68 in their original form for the first time. Captain Samuel Wallis was the first Englishman to come across the Tuamotus and the Society Isles in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. His writings predate the available textual sources by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the logs of the Spanish voyages and James Cook - whose text Wallis' prefigures. The three logs attest to the very first encounter between Europeans and Tahitians, but until now comparatively little research has been conducted on the more elaborate second volume and none on the first. The Polynesian archipelagos grew into objects of discourse over the years and Wallis' logs may very well be located at the heart of these evocative constructs.

The publication of key voyaging manuscripts has contributed to the flourishing of enduring and prolific worldwide scholarship across numerous fields. These navigators and their texts were instrumental in spurring on further exploration, annexation and ultimately colonisation of the Pacific territories in the space of only a few decades. This series will present new sources and primary texts in English, paving the way for postcolonial critical approaches in which the reporting, writing, rewriting and translating of Empire and the 'Other' takes precedence over the safeguarding of master narratives. Each of the volumes contains an introduction that sets out the context in which these voyages took place and extensive annotations clarify and explain the original texts. The first volume makes available Samuel Wallis' logs of the Dolphin's voyage 1766-68 in their original form for the first time. Captain Samuel Wallis was the first Englishman to come across the Tuamotus and the Society Isles in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. His writings predate the available textual sources by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the log of the Spanish voyages and James Cook - whose text Wallis' prefigures. The three logs attest to the very first encounter between Europeans and Tahitians, but until now comparatively little research has been conducted on the more elaborate second volume and none on the first. The Polynesian archipelagos grew into objects of discourse over the years and Wallis' logs may very well be located at the heart of these evocative constructs. The translated accounts of voyages undertaken by foreign vessels abounded in an era when they encouraged not only competitive geopolitical initiatives but also commercial enterprises throughout Europe, resulting in a voluminous textual corpus. However, French merchant-seaman Etienne Marchand's journal of his voyage round the world in 1790-1792, encompassing an important visit to the Marquesas Archipelago during his first crossing of the Pacific, remained unpublished until 2005 and has only now been made available in English. The second volume of this series comprises an annotated translation in English of this document.

Dressing Global Bodies addresses the complex politics of dress and fashion from a global perspective spanning four centuries, tying the early global to more contemporary times, to reveal clothing practice as a key cultural phenomenon and mechanism of defining one's identity. This collection of essays explores how garments reflect the hierarchies of value, collective and personal inclinations, religious norms and conversions. Apparel is now recognized for its seminal role in global, colonial and post-colonial engagements and for its role in personal and collective expression. Patterns of exchange and commerce are discussed by contributing authors to analyse powerful and diverse colonial and postcolonial practices. This volume rejects assumptions surrounding a purportedly all-powerful Western metropolitan fashion system and instead aims to emphasize how diverse populations seized agency through the fashioning of dress. Dressing Global Bodies contributes to a growing scholarship considering gender and race, place and politics through the close critical analysis of dress and fashion; it is an indispensable volume for students of history and especially those interested in fashion, textiles, material culture and the body across a wide time frame.

Grounded in critical heritage studies and drawing on a Pacific Northwest Coast case study, Maritime Heritage in Crisis explores the causes and consequences of the contemporary destruction of Indigenous heritage sites in maritime settings. Maritime heritage landscapes are undergoing a period of unprecedented crisis: these areas are severely impacted by coastal development, continued population growth and climate change. Indigenous heritage sites are thought to be particularly vulnerable to these changes and cultural resource management is frequently positioned as a community's first line of defense, yet there is increasing evidence that this archaeological technique is an ineffective means of protection. Exploring themes of colonial dislocation and displacement, Hutchings positions North American archaeology as neoliberal statecraft: a tool of government designed to promote and permit the systematic clearance of Indigenous heritage landscapes in advance of economic development. Presenting the institution of archaeology and cultural resource management as a grave threat to Indigenous maritime heritage, Maritime Heritage in Crisis offers an important lesson on the relationship between neoliberal heritage regimes and global ecological breakdown.

During the nineteenth century, British and American naval supremacy spanned the globe. The importance of transoceanic shipping and trade to the European-based empire and her rapidly expanding former colony ensured that the ocean became increasingly important to popular literary culture in both nations. This collection of ten essays by expert scholars in transatlantic British and American literatures interrogates the diverse meanings the ocean assumed for writers, readers, and thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic during this period of global exploration and colonial consolidation. The book's introduction offers three critical lenses through which to read nineteenth-century Anglophone maritime literature: "wet globalization," which returns the ocean to our discourses of the global; "salt aesthetics," which considers how the sea influences artistic culture and aesthetic theory; and "blue ecocriticism," which poses an oceanic challenge to the narrowly terrestrial nature of "green" ecological criticism. The essays employ all three of these lenses to demonstrate the importance of the ocean for the changing shapes of nineteenth-century Anglophone culture and literature. Examining texts from Moby-Dick to the coral flower-books of Victorian Australia, and from Wordsworth's sea-poetry to the Arctic journals of Charles Francis Hall, this book shows how important and how varied in meaning the ocean was to nineteenth-century Anglophone readers. Scholars of nineteenth-century globalization, the history of aesthetics, and the ecological importance of the ocean will find important scholarship in this volume.

What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters. Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage. England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. Highly illustrated and based on extensive new research, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in England's maritime heritage.

This is a factual account, written in the pace of fiction, of hundreds of dramatic losses, heroic rescues, and violent adventures at the stormy meeting place of northern and southern winds and waters -- the Graveyard of the Atlantic off the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

"Each of the twelve authors deftly plumb the depths of documentary sources, literary analyses, personal observations, biographical and historical accounts to improve vastly on the seemingly two-dimensional nature of the pirate"
--"The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History"

"With this collection, those swashbuckling heroes, or villains, ranging the wide seas in search of pillage and plunder, become individuals and groups situated firmly within their own geographic, political, economic, and historical contexts."
--"Journal of Folklore Research"

The romantic fiction of pirates as swashbuckling marauders terrorizing the high seas has long eclipsed historical fact. Bandits at Sea offers a long-overdue corrective to the mythology and the mystique which has plagued the study of pirates and served to deny them their rightful legitimacy as subjects of investigation.

With essays by the foremost scholars on these countercultural "social bandits"as Lingua Franca recently dubbed themthis collection examines various aspects of the phenomenon in the three main areas where it occurred: the Caribbean/Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and East Asia. We come to understand who pirates were, as well as the socio-economic contexts under which they developed and flourished.

Comparisons between various types of piracy illustrate differences in practice and purpose between pirates of different areas; social histories, including examinations of women pirates and their historical significance and circumstances, offer similar insight into the personal lives of pirates from diverse regions. Far from serving as dens of thieves, pirate ships were often highlyregulated microcosms of democracy. The crews of pirate vessels knew that majority rule, racial equality and equitable division of spoils were crucial for their survival, marking them as significantly more liberal than national governments.

Scholars, students and a general audience ever intrigued by talesand now truthsof piracy on the high seas will welcome Bandits at Sea.

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth is a privileged glimpse into the private correspondence of the officers and sailors who set out in May 1845 on the Erebus and Terror for Sir John Franklin's fateful expedition to the Arctic. The letters of the crew and their correspondents begin with the journey's inception and early planning, going on to recount the ships' departure from the river Thames, their progress up the eastern coast of Great Britain to Stromness in Orkney, and the crew's exploits as far as the Whalefish Islands off the western coast of Greenland, from where the ships forever departed the society that sent them forth. As the realization dawned that something was amiss, heartfelt letters to the missing were sent with search expeditions; those letters, returned unread, tell poignant stories of hope. Assembled completely and conclusively from extensive archival research, including in far-flung family and private collections, the correspondence allows the reader to peer over the shoulders of these men, to experience their excitement and anticipation, their foolhardiness, and their fears. The Franklin expedition continues to excite enthusiasts and scholars worldwide. May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth provides new insights into the personalities of those on board, the significance of the voyage as they saw it, and the dawning awareness of the possibility that they would never return to British shores or their families.

In the summer of 1773 the 14-year old Horatio Nelson took part in an expedition to the Arctic, which came close to ending his naval career before it had begun. The expedition was to find a navigable northern passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, and was supported by the Royal Society and King George III. Two bomb vessels HMS Racehorse and Carcass were fitted out and strengthened under the command of Captain Hon. Constantine Phipps. It was an extremely cold Arctic summer and the ships became locked in ice far from Spitzbergen and were unable to cut their way out until days later when the wind changed and the ice broke up. The ships were extricated and returned home.

On the trip, the young Nelson had command of one of the smaller boats of the ships, a four-oared cutter manned by twelve seamen. In this he helped to save the crew of a boat belonging to the Racehorse from an attack by a herd of enraged walruses. He also had a more famous encounter with a polar bear, while attempting to obtain a bearskin as a present for his father, an exploit that later became part of the Nelson legend.

Drawing on the ship's journals and expedition commander Phipps' journal from the National Archives, the book creates a picture of the expedition and life on board. Using the ships' muster books it also details the ship's crews giving the different roles and ranks in the ships. The book is illustrated using some of the ship's drawings and charts and pictures of many objects used on the ship, while a navigational chart of the route taken has been created from the logbooks.

The book also looks at the overall concept of naval exploration as set in train by Joseph Banks and the Royal Society. The fact that the expedition failed as a result of poor planning with potentially tragic results demonstrates the difficulties and uncertainties of such an expedition. It also looks at a great naval commander at the earliest stage of his career and considers how the experience might have shaped his later career and attitudes. Other great captains and voyages are discussed alongside Nelson, including Captain Cook and his exploration of the south seas and the later ill-fated northern journeys of Franklin and Shackleton.

'What joy to be at sea again, adrift on the vast Pacific, in the clutches of a gifted storyteller. Harrison Christian and the mutineers of Men Without Country held me happily captive to the very last page.' - Dava Sobel, author of Longitude 'Men Without Country shows what a writer can produce when he has real skin in the game... Harrison Christian sets the record straight on the Bounty mutiny with forensic fervour, including the before, the during - and the after.' - Adam Courtenay, author of The Ship that Never Was Full of misadventure and mystery, Men Without Country is a sweeping history of exploration and rebellion in the South Seas - told by a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, the man who led the infamous mutiny on the Bounty A mission to collect breadfruit from Tahiti becomes the most famous mutiny in history when the crew rise up against Captain William Bligh, with accusations of food restrictions and unfair punishments. Bligh's remarkable journey back to safety is well documented, but the fates of the mutinous men remain shrouded in mystery. Some settled in Tahiti only to face capture and court martial, others sailed on to form a secret colony on Pitcairn Island, the most remote inhabited island on earth, avoiding detection for twenty years. When an American captain stumbled across the island in 1808, only one of the Bounty mutineers was left alive. Told by a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, Men Without Country details the journey of the Bounty, and the lives of the men aboard. Lives dominated by a punishing regime of hard work and scarce rations, and deeply divided by the hierarchy of class. It is a tale of adventure and exploration punctuated by moments of extreme violence - towards each other and the people of the South Pacific. For the first time, Christian provides a comprehensive and compelling account of the whole story - from the history of trade and exploration in the South Seas to Pitcairn Island, which provided the mutineers' salvation, and then became their grave.

Pull up anchor, set sail and hit the open water with this wonderful collection of sea shanties and their fascinating history. People have been singing at sea since they first set sail and sea shanties still fascinate and entertain. Composed and performed by sailors to ensure the rhythmic operation of hauling and heaving tasks aboard huge merchant vessels, the songs also boosted camaraderie, positivity and motivation. Life at sea was harsh and relentless, and these songs brought some much-needed energy and humour. This bountiful book brings together over 50 of the best-loved ballads and their fascinating history, alongside stunning black and white illustrations. This is the perfect gift for anyone wanting to delve into the magical maritime world of 'Wellerman' and beyond.

The Islamic perception of the socio-economic process is dynamic and its insistence on social justice is uncompromising. To produce the best social structure, according to this view, man's economic endeavours should be motivated by a meaningful moral philosophy. In the face of the challenges presented by the modern world, the practice of Islamic economics raises many complex and profound issues. These are addressed in this highly important work, which must be considered essential reading for all those who live in the vision of the 'right'. First published in 1994.

In 2020, the Cunard Line celebrates its 180th anniversary. One of the most famous transatlantic shipping companies, Cunard is beloved on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as around the world. Cunard pioneered many new technologies and launched the largest and fastest liners of their day. During both world wars the Cunarders answered the call of duty and transported thousands of troops to support the Allies. Today, the enduring history of this great shipping line has carried on into the twenty-first century, with the three current Queens celebrating Cunard's heritage, while a new ship is under construction. This new paperback edition is updated to cover events since the line's 175th anniversary. With new and updated stories from people involved with line, Cunard's 180-year history is shared in stunning photographs and engaging text to explore the legacy of the great Cunarders.